books:

	X-teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate and Succeed Deborah Ancona, Henrik Bresman Harvard Business School Press, 2007 - 260 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The authors highlight that X-teams not only are able to adapt in ways that traditional teams aren?t, but that they actually improve an organization?s ability to produce creative ideas and execute them?increasing the entrepreneurial and innovative capacity within the firm. What?s more, the new environment demands what the authors call ?distributed leadership,? and the book highlights how X-teams powerfully embody this idea.

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Excellent book!

X-Teams is great book for those who participate on or manage any type of team within the corporate environment. The theme is that successful teams spend more time externally focused rather than internally focused on their team itself. The last 1/3 of the book are very practical tools and tips for establishing and managing successful teams. These are concepts learned from countless interviews and intensive research over the years by the leadership team at MIT. I highly recommend this book.


A methodology for managing teams and projects.

Years of research show that a team that focuses solely on internal team building is likely to fail. The "X-team" emphasizes external activity, and a flexible membership and leadership structure. Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman write that such a team is not only more likely to succeed, but will often exceed managerial expectations. This book, divided into three sections, tells you why some teams fail, how to create one that works and how to manage it through every phase of a project. The authors make liberal use of examples from major corporations, such as BP and Microsoft, to illustrate all their principles. The terminology is somewhat proprietary, but the approach makes a great deal of sense. We recommend this book to managers and team members alike.

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A process to help your teams be more outward looking and aware of its stakeholders

This book takes the basic concepts of team building and management, but adds an important twist and then gives it a framework with lots of labels and structure that are quite useful to a consultant, and maybe less useful to a team trying to get something done besides working the process.

The basic idea of an x-team is that too many failed teams become so inward looking that they fail to connect with their stakeholders. They end up trying to deliver something their customers don't want and can't use. The team becomes more insular and then internally divisive while the project suffers and eventually fails.

The difference is that an x-team gets connected with its stakeholders right away. It goes out and learns all it can about what is needed and how it needs to be delivered before they make decisions and set their process in stone. In fact, nothing about an x-team is set in stone. I won't try and lay out the somewhat involved sets of processes and phases the authors provide, but it is an interesting concept and I do agree that it can help some teams do much better. However, it may be too involved for others. In some cases, this much process to manage can cause the team to become just as separated from what it needs to do as any inward looking team.

Still, it might be just the ticket for you. If you want to look at some ideas for energizing your team processes while getting some structure, this might do it for you.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

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Looking outward instead of being insular...

Much of the literature you read on building teams in the workplace deal with the internal interactions of the group... how they get along, building morale, etc. Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman offer up a different take on team success in the book X-teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate and Succeed. Given my experience over the years, their methodology is likely to be more successful than the conventional approach.

Contents:
Part 1 - Why Good Teams Fail: Into a Downward Spiral; A Changing World
Part 2 - What Works: X-Team Principle 1 - External Activity; X-Team Principle 2 - Extreme Execution; X-Team Principle 3 - Flexible Phases; X-Factors - The X-Team Support Structure
Part 3 - How To Build Effective X-Teams: Tools for X-Teams - From Theory to Action; Crafting an Infrastructure for Innovation - The X-Team Program; X-Teams - Distributed Leadership in Action
Notes; Index; About the Authors

The most noticeable difference between the conventional team and the X-Team is the focus of their activity... external. Instead of spending time waiting for the team to gel and feel secure, waiting for the rules and directions to be established, Ancona and Bresman advocate for an external focus. Get out in the field immediately and start talking to the potential customers and clients. This tilt towards immediate action may well lead to a moderate level of confusion and frustration on the team in the early days, but the net result is a quick start and insights that can't be gleaned from existing knowledge. Couple this with active "ambassadorship" and flexible membership and team roles, and things get done rather than just being talked about. The authors have done a lot of study and research in this field, and many of the examples (both good and bad) are real companies with actual teams that created successful products. This emphasis on real world results is good, as otherwise this could come across as a nice academic exercise with no track record to back it up.

This would make a good read for team leaders and management who are dissatisfied with how their teams are currently functioning (or not, as the case may be). There's no promise that following these steps will make your next project smooth and successful, but it could significantly increase the odds of showing results.

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Good new insights in teams


X-Teams is a well-written book on teams with an important new message. This is: well working teams should look outside as much as inside. In this review, I doubted between a 3 and a 4 star rating, though I decided on 4 stars.

The book is divided in 3 parts. The first part tries to explain why our mental model about teams might result into bad teams. The second part is the main content of the book and it talks about what X-Teams are and how you can try to create them. The third part talks about implementation issues.

Part 1 shows examples of teams which follow traditional team models and yet fail. Their mistake is that they are too much inwards focused and do not pay attention to the changing world out there.

Part 2 explains what X-Teams are. X-Teams are based on 3 principles:

- External activity
- Extreme execution
- Flexible phases

External activity is the main principle and it focuses on the fact that teams need to not just focus on themselves but at the same time keep in touch with the outside environment and coordinate their work within their context. Teams do this by scouting outside, coordinating their work with others and staying in contact with the management. Extreme execution is about the team work itself. Even though they need to keep track with the outside, they still need to get work done and focus on the work inside the team also! Principle one and two together give a balanced message about teams. The third principle is, in my opinion, somewhat odd compared to the first two. It talks about that teams typically need to go through three phases and what they need to do in these phases.

The rest of part two talks about building a team support structure.

Part 3 talks about the implementation of X-Teams. I found this part very disappointing and think the book would have been better without it (reason for doubting to go to stars). It talks about setting up a X-Team program and gives some examples.

All in all, the beginning of the book is really good. Halfway I started losing some of my interest and I was getting bored with the repetition. Though the message of the book is an important one. I'd recommend to read the book and read chapter 1-5, then stop :)

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reviews: page 1, 2

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